Defendants of the adverse trends corrupting mainstream country music will give you many reasons why the trends aren’t really adverse at all, including that if you don’t like the music, you should simply exercise your right to not listen, and that the music isn’t necessarily affecting behavior so in the end it’s harmless. But part of the problem with popular country music these days is that it is so effusive throughout society. You turn on a college football game or watch a wrestling broadcast, and there Florida Georgia Line is singing the intro or taking you into a commercial break. Country is now the most popular genre of American music, meaning it’s being piped into grocery stores, being played at schools, and is ever-present in cars being driven by moms and dads all across the country as their kids sit in the back seat soaking it all up and singing along to catchy songs with simplistic rhythms and repetitive themes perfect for getting stuck in the heads of youngsters.

Compounding the problem is that just a few short years ago, country was one of the safest places on the radio dial for parents with small kids in the car. Think about the “soccer mom” effect that country music was cultivating in the late oughts, when artists like Taylor Swift, Carrie Underwood, and Rascal Flatts were dominating the country airwaves. Country radio was full of fluffy pop country songs that parents could feel fine, if not proud of playing in front of their kids compared to the filth pervading Top 40 radio at the time.

Now the entire radio field has been reversed, even though parent’s presets may still be on the country station. Country is where the perverse sentiments of popular culture have come to roost, and the endless droning in songs about drinking, drug use, materialism, and misogynistic views towards women are nearly required to get your music at the top of the country charts. It’s been theorized by Saving Country Music that part of the reason for this trend is a backlash from the mid-00’s when the rising sentiment became that country music was becoming woosified. That’s when you had artists like Eric Church, Jason Aldean, and then later Brantley Gilbert and Florida Georgia Line beginning their ascent, purposely focusing on many non family-friendly themes and constantly trying to prove how country they were in their lyrics.

However we got here, country music is now a haven for filth on the radio, easily giving pop and even hip-hop stations a run for their money. And as mom and dad find their own personal preference on the country station, the themes in the music get incessantly pumped into the young skulls riding in booster chairs and holding sippy cups in the back seat. It’s not that drinking themes haven’t always been present in country—you could argue they’re one of the foundations of the genre. It’s more about who they’re being played to and in front of, and how these themes are being portrayed (glamorous instead of cautionary). Even if you choose to avoid the music yourself, you can’t help but worry how it is affecting society as a whole when so many young people are being subjected to this music.

This was illustrated just about perfectly on Friday (11-21) by CBS Evening News reporter Steve Hartman when he took a deeper look into how his two young kids were computing the lyrics of country songs in their developing brains as they sat and listened to popular country music in the family motor carriage.

Steve Hartman’s conclusion? “I’ve got some sobering news — Nashville is alcohol-poisoning the minds of our young people,” he says in his report.

Hartman goes on to illustrate just how deeply popular country’s drinking themes have burrowed into his two son’s brains as they recite titles and lyrics to popular country songs effortlessly. Hartman turns his blame to Kix Brooks, the host of the syndicated American Country Countdown, where apparently the majority of the Hartman kids’ exposure to popular country music comes from as they listen to the weekly show on the way to swimming lessons. So papa Hartman took the kids to Kix Brooks’ studio and asked the man himself what he thought about the trend of drinking songs in country, and Kix initially drew a blank, illustrating the sort of “deer in headlights” moment many parents feel when faced with the reality that what their kids are listening to might affect them adversely in the future.

Reporter Steve Hartman did a good job of explaining how kids listening to popular country songs can be a good teaching opportunity for parents to explain the ideas behind responsible drinking, etc., but it may be a little too much to expect this from most busy parents who listen to popular country song’s party themes as their own form of escapism. And as Hartman says, these lessons were something he was hoping to avoid until “after 1st grade.”

And Steve Hartman can’t be painted as some modern country hater or alarmist. After all, he was voluntarily listening to the American Country Countdown himself, and many in the industry, including Big Machine Label Group CEO Scott Borchetta have seen their own dilemma with so many drinking songs, saying in December of 2013, “Everybody in Nashville must be drinking 24-7. We’re a bunch of drunks down here. There’s too much, to be honest with you. We can’t keep talking about Fireball and Coors Light and having the tailgate down, etc.”

Of course all of this is anecdotal. There’s no direct data corroborating that five-year-old’s are hitting the sauce too early because they listened to Little Big Town’s “Day Drinking.” But it does illustrate how when people show concern for the themes of country songs, even if they’re not inclined to listen themselves, they’re concerned that it could be having adverse effects on society as a whole. Like teachers in a madras, with a lack of variety, these popular country songs drive home the same themes over and over until it can be recited effortlessly by impressionable minds. It also make one wonder if the underlying reason is to make young consumers for country’s principal advertisers, like the Joe Camel effect of 2014.

Hartman’s report only deals with the drinking aspect of popular country songs, but really you could do a similar experiment dealing with sexual themes, possibly with very young female listeners. This all doesn’t mean these songs are patently evil. Music made for adults who (hypothetically) have the ability to rationalize what they’re listening to and not let it affect them adversely is fine. But just like drinking itself, the music should be consumed by an age-appropriate audience, and as with all things, in moderation. However mainstream country at the moment is on the drinking song binge of its life, even if the substance of the songs is slowly improving, and the question remains if it’s having an effect on the behavior of listeners, or if it will shape the behavior of listeners in the future.

63 Comments

HotShot
November 24, 2014 @
9:15 am

Great point at the top of the article Trigger. Bothers me when people use the”don’t like it don’t listen” line..kinda hard when it’s coming out the speakers of every truckstop and those TouchTone jukeboxes automatically play that crap at every bar.

If your neighbor was drinking dirty water that may contaminate themselves or their children, it’s your job to speak up and warn them about it, and help guide them where the clean water is. Pop country isn’t making anyone sick (well, I guess that’s up for debate), but that doesn’t mean it can’t be harmful. When criticizing bad music, so many people take it as insults or judgementalism or jealousy, when sometimes you’re truly trying to guide these people to making better choices that will eventually make them more happy and healthy.

I imagine this is the same mindset a lot of people have when they question the lifestyle choices of others. Some may say, judge not lest you be judged, but alternately, when you know a better way of living, isn’t it your duty to tell others?

I’m glad more people are starting to see it. Look at Johnny Paycheck’s “Georgia In A Jug”. This is an example of a song where drinking is not necessarily encouraged. The listener can tell that the narrator knows what he’s doing is wrong but he’s trying to cope with heartache they only way he knows how. But now, it’s all about partying and commercialization, I mean these bro-country guys name drop brands like there’s no tomorrow. It all comes down to marketing and money.

Drinking songs are not the problem. It’s the pervasiveness of drinking songs, who they’re targeting, and the way they’re portraying drinking as if it can be done to excess every single day and night without any ramifications. There’s nothing wrong with a happy drinking song every now and then either. But the way popular country music is portraying it at the moment, drinking is the only way you can have fun, be accepted, get laid, fit in, and nobody ever gets capped with DUI’s, nobody ever ends up in rehab, nobody ends up ruing their family lives or personal friendships because of it. I hate to sound like an alarmist, but it’s not only potentially harmful to young listeners, it simply isn’t true.

That’s exactly what I was saying in my comment. Using the context of an old country song about getting drunk and how it’s not portrayed as a good thing. And you’re absolutely right, these “artists” are selling a lifestyle that is totally unrealistic while the people who listen to these songs and try to emulate that lifestyle are the ones who suffer the consequences. It’s sad, really.

I used to live that lifestyle: work, go to school and get blackout drunk and so stoned you could slap the piss outta me and I wouldn’t wake up. Running buddies I got trashed with are now either dead, in jail or they’re like me: alive by the grace of God but live with regrets and making amends for our wrongdoing. It truly is an unhealthy lifestyle and if someone walks down that dark path, they’ll end up like my running buddies or like me. When you’re young and foolish, you don’t know any better and youddon’t care about what the consequences might be. Now that I’m 35, I’ve learned to live with my regrets but learning to let them go in the process. The drunken, stoned “party 24/7” lifestyle truly ain’t worth the pain and suffering in the long run. Take it from one who’s learned this lesson the hard way…

This is exactly why we need websites like yours and more people like yourself spreading the good word that there are alternatives to what folks hear on mainstream country radio. Hell, its nice to see even a pop country artists like Carrie Underwood singing about her faith, which now considered odd considering what we hear in mainstream country.

I have a 5 year old myself and had quite the “ah haa” moment last year when, my then 4 year old, sang Red Solo Cup at his preschool. I was called in for a conference, lectured on child appropriate media and advised to turn the radio off when he was in the car. At the time, I thought they were being a bit dramatic. Then I thought, what if he had sung something worse? I didn’t realize that he was even absorbing the music. I still don’t turn the radio off when he is in the car, but I do turn the station when something blatantly sexual or drinking/drug related comes on. I obviously don’t let my young child watch sex/drug abuse on tv so why am I letting him listen to songs about it in the car.

Thanks for sharing this JC. I know a few folks with young ones who would never make the effort to turn off the TV or the radio when age-inappropriate content was aired .

I think its especially notable here because country was once considered the ‘safer’ content on the options list ..CD, radio and/or video . Now , it seems, drinking and sexual innuendo ( and more graphic) are used to sell country right alongside all other forms of ‘entertainment ‘ . I’m always a bit saddened when I see the transformation in a young female artist after being signed . The image becomes much more mature ( make-up , hairstyle , fashion, song themes ) in an effort to make them more marketable . (Carrie , Taylor Swift , Band Perry etc.. ) when all it would take is perhaps a few artists to see through this and remain truer to themselves as artists .

There’s no doubt that in the sixties a lot of kids, probably millions of them, started smoking weed when it was obvious that our rock heroes were smoking. and doing other stuff. More than a few kids and their families suffered a lot as a result.

a lot of these “country” stars, on tv, regularly talk about needing a drink, having another drink, and at the T.V. country music awards shows, they’re constantly holding and hoisting a beer.

Maybe if their music was a little better, they wouldn’t need to resort to such lame, easy to do B.S.

wonder how many of Sturgill’s fans need to get loaded before going to one of his concerts?

The difference is that in the sixties the songs, with a few exceptions, didn’t include the overt references glorifying drug use that today’s country music includes regarding booze. So while many fans who learned of the drug use of their favorite artists messed up their lives by trying to emulate that behavior, young children in general weren’t being inundated with a pro-drug message just by passively listening to the music.

This is the major problem with today’s country music. If you were to listen to 10 songs on modern country radio, 7 of them would in some way glorify alcohol consumption. Country music has always embraced the theme of using alcohol to cope with life’s problems, but with a few exceptions, it’s never been glorified as a lifestyle that is being pushed on not just the young but all age groups. In the classic songs, it seemed to show the reality of over consumption. Hangovers, an unhappy wife, stints in jail or prison, and broken homes always seemed to be the consequence. Now the new songs seem to just be a 3minute 30 second commercial glamorizing that 3 drink buzz feeling but not talking about what #4 thru 12 do to you.

Now I’m by no way a prude. I enjoy my drink on occasion but I also know what it will do to me if I over indulge myself and have unfortunately seen the destruction within my own extended family that alcoholism can cause. I remember reading an article one time that said alcohol should be viewed as grease for life. A little makes things move a lot easier, but too much sends you right off the tracks. In the end you make your choices and you have to live with them. That theme is found in plenty of Merle Haggard and George Jones songs, but doesn’t seem to be very present in the music of today. New country is missing the consequences that used to be prevalent in the old songs.

My own sister had to go through this a few nights ago with her daughter: sitting in the car seat singing Dierks Bentley’s Drunk on a Plane. At first I laughed at it because that same age I was learning songs like “The Thunder Rolls” “Here in the Real World” and “Don’t Let Our Love Stop Slippin’ Away”

When I was a kid mom was highly mindful of the songs I heard, and there were certain songs, or at least parts of songs that got turned off (the uncensored version of “Devil Went Down to Georgia” always got turned down at that one part) and there was even one artist that was pretty much NEVER allowed (Conway Twitty).

At this point, I swear 3/4th of the singers on country radio would be permanently banned from my ears. Florida Georgia Line can”™t just straight up sing about wanting to “get laid” and then making an obvious sexual innuendo in a song about getting drunk and stoned and expect parents to be okay with it.

Unfortunately, a lot of the parents who would listen to Florida Georgia Line are the same ones who unfortunately don’t possess the type of self-awareness or sense of responsibility to see they’re brainwashing their kids in the back seat while they’re listening.

That’s why I commend this CBS reporter for not just pointing out the trouble with these songs, but presenting some workable solutions for consumers who may not realize what’s happening when their kids listen to this music. Turn it off, or at least talk to them about the realities of drinking. Kids are a lot damn smarter than we think, and sometimes more insightful and aware than the adults taking care of them…until they get dragged into the same routines by corporate music.

These clowns will defend themselves by coming out and saying that drinking songs have always been a part of country music. Of course they have, but the tone is completely different. Songs like “If Drinking Don’t Kill Me”, or “Tear in My Beer” were obvious laments of the lifestyle heavy drinking brings. The only classic country song I can think of that straight up celebrates alcoholism is Willie Nelson’s “I Gotta Get Drunk”, which is much more clever than the garbage purveyed by Nashville these days. And I fully anticipate one of these asshats saying “well your hero Sturgill Simpson sings about drugs all the time”, to which I may not even be able to respond since their wine cooler/fireball fried brains probably can’t comprehend the meaning of a song that contains actual depth. I long for the days when Country isn’t cool again.

It’s a fair accusation to say, “Hey, Sturgill’s out there condoning drug use,” and he’s caught some heat for that, and for some stuff that people take as being anti-religious. And those are the criticisms you’re going to face when you broach those subjects in your songs. But “Turtles All The Way Down” would never be played on mainstream country radio for the masses, and it never was meant to be. “Life of Sin” could be, and it has that element of a cautionary tale that would be healthy for many mainstream fans to hear. Same can be said for many independent artists who release a lot of adult-oriented material. They’re not bad songs, or bad people for releasing them. They’re singing to a more mature audience, and one that understands both sides of the drinking coin, and are many times dealing with demons themselves and the music helps to do that.

Is it glorifying drug use to say “they all changed the way I see, but love’s the only thing that ever saved my life”?
Isn’t that a teaching moment for the kids if you need one?
Not in the same bucket as this topic IMHO.

Why does Kix enable this? I would think he’s financially secure enough that he could be out there calling a spade a spade rather than going on air every week and chuckling about some terrible Thomas Rhett song.

What’s funny is that “Neon Moon,” a song about the lonely and depressing side of drinking, still gets fairly regular airplay after 22 years. Don’t know if we’ll be hearing any FGL in two decades.

Kix is just trying to keep his name relevant and on the radio. He doesn’t pick what’s on the American Country Countdown, the charts do that for him. He comes into the studio for maybe 2 hours every week, reads off a script supplied to him for voice overs between songs that get cut and pasted into the program by an engineer, and goes home.

Exactly, Kix Brooks didn’t write the songs or sing them. He is the DJ who announces the songs that have been chosen. When Brooks commented that young kids aren’t their target audience I took that to mean that parents are ultimately responsible for what their children listen to. I agree. Brooks also made a good point that trends in country music are cyclical.

Sturgill Simpson didn’t release “Turtles All The Way Down” to mainstream country radio like Florida Georgia Line released “Sun Daze” or Little Big Town released “Day Drinking.” If he ever does release a song like that to the mainstream, then it would be worth the discussion if this is right or not. It wouldn’t be fair to overlook adult-themed songs by our favorite artists just because we like them. But again, the songs are not the problem. The problem is who is being exposed to them, purposely or inadvertently, and what effect this might be having.

“Marijuana, LSD, Psilocyobin, DMT, they all changed the way I see, BUT LOVE’S THE ONLY THING THAT’S EVER SAVED MY LIFE.” Sturgill’s presenting a totally different message than any beer and girls song on the radio.

I think a more harmful influence on young boys/males is the sexists and dismissive attitude towards female…it’s bad enough for women in today’ world without a new generation of males seeing females as brainless sex objects.

At the end of Steve Hartman’s CBS piece, you’ll notice it ends with a shot of the song title, “God Made Girls” written by his kids, alluding that this is the next discussion he’s going to need to have with his two boys. Possibly even more so than the drinking songs, I think you girls are seeing and hearing how women are being portrayed in country songs, and emulating that behavior because they believe that’s the only way to get attention from boys and to be popular. Luckily there’s been a few alternatives like Maddie & Tae’s “Girl In A Country Song” that offer a bit of a counter-balance (even if the song is weak itself), but right now I’m not sure there’s ANY single that casts drinking to excess in a negative light.

Western pop culture and media, in chasing the $$$ ,is progressively more contradictory and hypocritical in its messages to youth including its celebration of a drinking culture while airing ads by M.A.D.D and the like to curb its use , articles by fashion magazines featuring unhealthy looking female models sexed up to sell clothing while others preach ‘love yourself and your body for who you are ” ,and the dismantling of language censorship in media at the same time parents reprimand children for use of those words , phrases and connotations in most homes . Not to mention the ongoing overuse of selling pop music with sex ( AM-Awards show , for example , with J-Lo stooping so low as to simply turn her back to the audience and shake her booty at the crowd and the TV audience . That’s what we embrace as ‘entertainment ‘ and allow networks to air while allowing our kids to be indoctrinated into the sex-sells ( read prostitution ) culture we’ve held up as the way to success for so many ????

There isn’t one person who would argue against the fact that young impressionable minds should not have to be exposed to this at every turn even if they are ( hopefully ) being instructed otherwise by responsible adults at home or school or elsewhere . Totally mixed , hypocritical messages are blasted out to our youth non-stop in so many forms in the name of profit . Fingering country songs as ” alcohol-poisoning ” is just one small aspect of that hypocrisy . How about shows that celebrate drug use ( Breaking Bad ) while prisons are filled with addicts committing crimes to support their addictions,….or how about the legalization of marijuana in 3 ( ? ) states while it is illegal in 47 others ….what the ..?? If that isn’t a contradictory , hypocritical message to young AND old I don’t know what is .

I know we’ve all seen or heard these kinds of observations before but the issue of hypocrisy certainly seems to be more prevalent in our wired society . As happy as I am to see a major network address some of this , I fear the contradicting messages will only grow as money continues to be the motivation for almost everything from ‘entertainment’ to lack of will in the fight to arrest climate change .

This will probably come as a shock to almost all readers of Saving Country Music, but there IS such a genre as children’s music, written for kids to listen to, and no, it doesn’t ALL suck and won’t drive parents crazy–some of it is badly done, yes, just like in any genre, but there are talented and passionate people making good music for children; if there’s a more thankless, less profitable genre out there, I don’t know what it would be and this blog post is a perfect illustration of that. I could write an entire column on it, but won’t (unless requested–ha!)

there’s also such a thing as “Children’s television.” the problem is not that the solution exists, it’s that the solution isn’t respected. they make bro-country not because it’s better, but because they don’t respect tradition, in the same way, the presence or absence of Children’s programming is irrelevant, until it is respected enough that parents actually turn it on for their kids, instead of FGL and Luke Bryan. The problem is not the music, it’s exposure.

It’s not a shock at all. A couple of my favorite alternative artists from the ’80s, They Might Be Giants and Dan Zanes (formerly of the Del Fuegos), among others, have released children’s albums in recent years that are very listenable for a serious music fan.

The problem is that you’re not going to be able to tune in a radio station that plays this music and also has weather and traffic updates.

I think that this is a very serious problem that happens not only in country music but that now transgresses other genres and other forms of entertainment. In a way, I sometimes think that the best thing to do is to simply live your life according to what your parents taught you and the wisdom they cemented and be given entertainment that actually cares about giving a thoughtful message.

Because ultimately, even if the person realizes that what he listens to is contrary to what he should believe / behave, if that message is gunned down sufficiently people are eventually going to act and behave the way these singers do.

Excellent article on state of country music. I give George Strait credit for releasing the song “Drinking Man” a couple of years ago. Although the song died on the charts, it had a powerful message as to how alcohol can destroy lives. Alcohol and drinking have been a common theme in country music for many years. However, the majority of those songs had real life attached to them. Listening to country music today, we hear nothing of the consequences to the wild partying and drinking.

Trigger used that Nashville buzzword that music row is cashing in on. ESCAPISM. Economy sucks, Iraq sucks, every time you turn on the news or get online another depressing article….hey I got an idea…lets do some day drinking, tonight it’s bottoms up, let’s go chill on a tailgate cause that’s my kind of night. ESCAPISM.

I actually don’t agree that Nashville is the problem. Its the people who are contributing to the bro-country tailgate drinking phenomenon that are the problem. He can’t make a generalization like that and paint everybody with the same brush. There are plenty of folks in Nashville that aren’t about that lifestyle and that love actual country music. I get his point and where he’s coming from but to make such a blanket statement like that? Not cool man. Its those fools that are giving us Southern folk a bad name and we get flak for it as a result. Gotta love the good ol’ “guilt by association” y’all…

You have to understand that “Nashville” is synonymous with the mainstream country music business, and equating it in such way is average for someone from the outside looking in like this reporter. I always make sure to delineate Music Row or the specific entities being criticized as opposed to painting the city with a broad brush. But when working in the context of a report on the Evening News, I think the generalities are generally expected.

I agree. As I watched the clip, it never occurred to me to assume that he was talking about every song by every artist that might be considered “country” or every artist that records in Nashville. I think it was made abundantly clear that he was talking about the majority of songs currently being played on mainstream country radio.

That’s the difference between you reporting on a story and this news reporter. You and I deal in specifics while dudes like him deal in generalities. This is why I don’t even bother to watch the news anymore.

If I had to guess it was lyrics like these that started the “Outlaw” sound… Parents didn’t want their kids exposed to that just like parents don’t want their kids to be exposed to constant drinking references in today’s Country, as the CBS article is saying.

I don’t think there is much of a difference between then and now in terms of adult content. The difference I think is good Country music should tell a story or have meaning and substance.

Teenagers and people that decided to quit learning after high school are the ones Nashville is marketing to because they are the ones who buy the records. The ignorant and naive don’t know how to appreciate a well written song because cognitive reasoning is involved.

But if you sing songs with words they know, like beer/girls/trucks, then they can relate to it without needing to think.

I absolutely despise the sound of todays popular Country music, but there is undoubtedly a market for it and they should continue to play it and record the shitty albums because this is America and you can listen to what you want to and make a living how you’d like… Just don’t label it as “Country Music”.

I hear Pearl Jam on my Classic Rock station, but we all know that isn’t Classic Rock. In a perfect world, the Bro Country (including all the crappy female Nashville groups) should only be played on Pop Radio and be on VH1/Mtv etc… A southern accent shouldn’t automatically put you on Country radio.

The genre needs to officially split. Put the Pop Country and American Pop together on Pop radio, and put the Outlaw/Americana on Country radio as it was intened.

Merle Haggard sang “But here I am again mixing misery and gin,
Sittin’ with all my friends and talkin’ to myself.
I look like I’m havin’ a good time but any fool can tell
That this honky tonk heaven really makes you feel like hell.”

We don’t hear many in country music today lament about the downside of too much drinking. It’s all one big, neverending bonfire party. I miss the days when country music made me feel something deep down, like this old song by Merle….

The King, George Strait himself, put out a compelling song to radio back 2012 (“Drinkin’ Man”). I love the song. It dealt with the sobering reality that alcohol can and does ruin lives. It wasn’t a redemptive song, it simply told the story of a man that ruined his life and marriage with alcohol. That’s the kind of story I want my kids to hear. That’s good for society as a whole. But what did country radio do? They blackballed the song and labeled it “too dark” for mainstream country audiences, and in doing so, made it Strait’s lowest charting single of his career up to that point (#37). It’s just disturbing that people are going bonkers over the crap that’s on the country waves today. I am 22 years old, by the way, and can’t stand listening to country these days. I love what country was putting out from the 80’s through about 2007. The last five years, especially, have been a joke. Shallow, pointless, stupid lyrics. Mind numbing. America needs to wake up.